The wire-rimmed glasses

It’s off. It’s on. It’s off. It’s on. That was the war on Times Now and CNN-IBN on Thursday night about whether Mahatma Gandhi’s personal effects were going under the hammer or not. It was odd to see two different channels breaking opposite versions of the same story. Don’t they have a corner in their office with rival channels running all the time?

‘Oh! They’re saying it’s on… Go verify your story! Are you really, really, sure it’s off?’

‘They’re saying it’s off… are you sleeping? Go check with your source!’

After 30 minutes of comedy central on prime news, I abandoned the interest only to wake up the next morning and catch the latest news of the auction. It did go on after all in spite of Otis saying that he was going to abandon it and all. The auction was closed in seven minutes flat and lo and behold… who did the bidding?? Vijay Mallya! What an irony – Gandhi all his life fought for the prohibition of liquor in the country and Mallya every year loses sales on “dry day”. And this very man had to bring Gandhiji’s things back to India.

Amidst all the jubilation of having got those things back to India, there’s one thing that fails to dawn on me. It was two Indians who remained in the auction process towards the end, the price was $1 million and the two successfully managed to put another $0.8 million into Otis’ pocket. Now if they were fighting to get the items back to India as we all like to believe, why didn’t they just stop when they knew that the other bidder was Indian too?

I like to believe that this was like any other auction. The highest bidder got the prize. Nothing to do with India, with our sentiments, culture, etc… I’m still surprised at why it turned out to be such a big deal. We can’t forever expect that these items have to belong to India alone. Tomorrow Otis and his professor friend will auction Gandhiji’s blood sample and ashes. Are we going to dole out another few millions in the name of our past? Would the Father of Our Nation have approved us going behind items that he had no significance for rather than follow the values he sought to spread?

In Balance or Imbalance

There are certain times during which certain books should never be read. Actually, I don’t know if there’s ever a good time to read these books. May be you should read them when you’re totally exhilarated and you need something – a jolt to bring you back to earth. Yes. There are the sad ones, the depressing ones and the ones that reek of despair – ‘A Fine Balance’ is the latter. To straighten out things – it’s a bloody good book, an enthralling one at that and Mistry is a master storyteller; but then that’s exactly why I picked the book up in the first place.

I read it; read it through breakfast; every evening after a long day at work; every night till my eyes gave way to the brutal force of sleep; read it through the weekend trip on the bus as long as the light permitted me to; even snatched a few minutes in the loo, at the parlor and while waiting. All the while, I was reading just to get a glimpse, no – a shimmer, that vaguely resounded of hope and something nice to come. Rohinton Mistry offered none; not at the beginning and definitely not at the end.

Poverty is worse than a disease. Because it never dies with the individual; it spreads across generations. If Rohinton was just talking about the misery of poverty, it would have still kept me sane. But his cauldron has more in it – the absurdity of political injunctions, the grotesque display of the narrow mindedness of the rich, the mutilation of justice, the widespread corruption and twisted providence – the final straw. Every time you convince yourself that things cannot get worse than this for the protagonists; that their Karma Grand Total is well above the minimum mark, he does it all over again; pushes them further and further into desolation till in the end they are far, far worse than they seemingly started off as. A Fine Balance is full of imbalances.

With all the traveling over the past month, I had kept aside Dostoevsky for a while thinking I’ll read something lighter and get back to him. My pick couldn’t have been worse. I definitely wish I had read one of Mistry’s happy ending books (if he’s ever written one) before picking this one up. Now I’m at cross roads; I definitely love his style and after a long time here’s an Indian author I feel like I could be so obsessed with, as I was once with Salman Rushdie. But the truth is I’m not that enterprising and I don’t want to go by that road again – not any time soon.

Getting Back in Touch

A week long marathon of churning out presentations ended on Saturday morning at 5 AM. That’s when I pressed the send button. It was worth it; it meant that the weekend was my own. After waking up from a weird dream late that morning, I realized that I needed to go shopping to pick up a canvas or two. I opened my acrylic tubes to see if they were still in a usable state after a cold cross-Atlantic flight and nearly twelve months of not being opened. Luckily, they were. Some more things got added to the list and the only thing missing was company. Not that I hate shopping alone; It’s the best way to get things done fast. But I was in no hurry and I’d been longing for company.

Scrolling down my contacts list, the fact that I have such a pitiful social life slowly dawns on me. I begin to miss M all over again. Damn the social life; if at least he was around... I went back to scrolling. The friends I had promised I would call over the weekend were either too busy this weekend or were not based in Bangalore to entertain my request and the colleague I usually hang out with was off visiting her hubby. I scrolled again. Found some school friend whose number had changed; a college friend who was busy on her way to some wedding. With no choice left I called AN again; half waiting to hear the Oz Boy’s voice in the background.

‘He’s landing this evening,’ she said.
‘Let’s go shopping then!’
‘Ok, see you in an hour.’

After that weekend of despair, I realized that I must have quite a few friends in Bangalore, since I grew up here, studied here, et al. Well, some of them have flown the nest owing to studies, work, marriage, etc; about the others – don’t be alarmed if an unknown number calls you one of these days just to say ‘hi’.

Bye, Bye, Hyderabad!

Once again, it’s time. Did 2008 really fly by or was it just me? It just seems like yesterday. Walking into this apartment with our luggage; going shopping for some household stuff; setting up the house; making friends. And now, it’s already time to move out; pack everything; and bid adieu. Hyderabad turned out to be one of our favorite cities in the world – apart from being the first (and only) Indian city that both M and I seem to agree about a long term future.

Reminding me of Grissom’s exit from the lab and the slow motion movement with which he notices the things around him, all the things that I took for granted all these days seem like the things I’ll miss the most. The walking around the lush green campus, the peacocks and the other wildlife, the shopping at the MORE store, the periodic visits to the city, the learning at the swimming pool, the lazy lunch at Goel’s, the late night library sessions, the punctual housekeeping staff, the numerous parties, Ten Downing Street, Satish’s backyard... Life gave us one more chance to great college fun and we absolutely loved it!!

A crooked twist of circumstances takes me back to my home town – Bangalore, where I shall continue to fight the traffic, the pollution and the damned infrastructure.

The truth and only the truth

Well… I’ve been debating whether to write this or not. Then I finally picked up the courage to tell M about it.

I asked him to guess.

And he guessed it!

‘What shit!? How does he do that?’

He laughed.

‘So it’s a fake? Do they know it’s a fake?’

‘Of course it’s not a fake. What do you mean it’s a fake? I did slog for it. Well, a little bit…’

It all started that Wednesday morning; that tainted Wednesday morning. After going down a couple of wrong roads, I reached the building thirty minutes after the appointed hour. It was still early during the day; the market was doing ok so far. There were even talks of the market ending up higher by the end of the day given the positive signs from the global market and some FIIs returning; even the rupee was rising. My meeting went off rather well. It was just another meeting. And I was even wearing my lucky data collection dress – it ought to have gone rather well. I got the information I wanted, pocketed the business cards and said adios. Ten minutes later, M calls.

‘You’re not going to believe this! Ramalinga Raju has quit.’

Oh! How long is this Maytas trouble going to last? Get over now! I think to myself.

‘He admitted to fraud.’

‘Fraud? What Fraud?’

‘Inflated accounts, cash, profits… the works.’

‘Oh! This is big!’

I get back home with doubts in my mind about the relevance of the morning’s meeting after all this. What if I had decided to go tomorrow instead? I make a mental note to personally wash the dress, lest it gets spoilt by the maid’s regular beating. Then something else gnaws my head. Something about that guy – something. We talked later the next day – AN and I; just some general catching up.

‘It’s so funny. Do you know how many of our convocations and functions he’s attended? I guess next year they’ll have to bring someone else!’

Oh yeah! Of course!! That’s it! He was there and I was there. He gave me my certificate. Well not just me, he even gave the gold medallist in our batch her certificate. I even have a photograph. The photograph that parents typically, proudly display in their living rooms. The photograph that I’m supposed to show to my kids and grandkids. The photograph that later in my life is supposed to get me all nostalgic about ‘those’ days. Well, this changes all that – the photograph has Mr. Ramalinga Raju and me in my smart graduation robe receiving my MBA degree from him… Does it really change all that? I called UV, for a quick ‘did-you-know’ conversation.

‘It’s ok sweetheart! That doesn’t change anything. It’s just weird, that’s all.’

Ok ok… I’m convinced.

‘It’s not fake, ok?’ I tell M.

‘Oh, wait till I call your boss and you tell her that.’ He teases.

I’m not worried about my boss. But this does rule out something. I guess I’ll never be able to make it to Infosys and oh… nor will M. Tainted and all. Not that I wanted to, but it’s nice to know there’s an option.

In the Middle

It’s been a long time – two months and more. There were days I felt overwhelmed by the deluge of thoughts and there were days of blissful vacant meandering. Last evening in search of a recent article by Ajit Balakrishnan, I scoured the internet and chanced upon the convocation speech he had delivered at the Indian Institute of Management – Calcutta in April 2007. In his speech, he briefly talks about his experiences in Calcutta more than three decades back, the period of political unrest in West Bengal, the Naxalite uprising and his small role in the middle of the ongoing social battle. He said that it now all seemed so far away and quaint. As he found himself in the middle of social change and history in the making, I wonder if he realized the weight of the moment in Indian history.

Today, we live in far more tumultuous times. Moments we will undoubtedly recall as pivotal in Indian and world history – the deep financial and economic crisis; the historical presidential win of Barrack Obama and the ruthless terrorist attacks on the Indian soil. Still in our youthful years, we are the fortunate (!!) ones to walk this earth during these frenzied times with the ability to understand their impact and if God intends live to tell the tale in the coming decades.

Godspeed!

Such is life!

I can feel it. It’s right here – on the tip of my tongue waiting to be uttered; inside that brain cell that’s connected to that nerve that’s supposed to send me the idea; on my fingertips ready to type away; in that drop of ink waiting to be scrawled into patterns; in my eyes that keep scouring for interesting subjects around me. It’s futile – all of it. I still can’t do it; I still can’t write. My tongue won’t speak; the ideas won’t flash; my fingers won’t move; the ink won’t flow and my eyes won’t stop.

All those things I’ve tried. But, this has to be done; I have to try harder, even hard, as hard as it takes. May be I’m not reading enough – I picked up books after books, rummaged for new blogs, read all the popular literary magazines. Nothing changed. But really, how giddy can I get! The spark needs to come from inside, I told myself. I opened a blank word document. It remained blank after two cups of tea and an hour of staring at it with fingers ready atop the keyboard. It’s the corner; it’s making me sick. I moved, lock stock and barrel, to the balcony. I stared at the sky, the glass pool, the flowers and day dreamed, instead. This is really not working. Why can’t I just write – a story, an opinion, a page, a line or even a question!! May be it’s the laptop – too modern for my conservative style. I picked up my yellow pad; doodled a bit and gave up. I’ll take a walk around campus, may be. The greenery, the architecture, the silence, the children, the swimming pool, the peacocks(!!!), the young faces – should inspire something. An hour of walking around in circles with a yellow pad and a pen didn’t change anything other than burn a few calories. May be I need fresh air (or in my case polluted air) and new people; it’s getting too familiar out here. A pocket notebook and another hour later, I was at a close-by supermarket, biting into a Frankie and sitting at a table all by myself. Perfect – so many different kinds of people, their acts to watch, the busy street on the other side, the entire world going past – and yet not a scribble! Can’t sit in a place; doesn’t work; I need to move; capture the world through moving eyes. The 4 pm shuttle, a window seat and a return ticket. Two hours later I had gone all the way up to the city and back to my village; the paper, no doubt, remained blank; my mind had gone still more blank. I give up – this is not my day; it’s hasn’t been my month or even my year. May be it’s time to hang up my pen after all.

Then, in perfect movie style, the phone rings. Oh, the pleasure of a change. Here I am, after a brief from my office I’m trying to put together this note by EOD, as they call it, and I have five word documents and 22 browser windows open. While three word documents and 10 browser windows relate to work, in the remaining I have two plots that are being developed and on-going research for them. And oh, another flicker from my brain– why things happen when we least want them to happen?